The costly consequences of typos
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Looking at what has been an unusual year, I think of how big events like the bushfires and the pandemic have made me aware of my own frailty as a human being. One of these frailties is making mistakes – one of the most human things we can do.
Without mistakes, we can’t learn or gain insight. Mistakes and accidents are fecund ground for creativity, exploration and discovery. For example, the life-changing invention of the pacemaker was possible because Wilson Greatbatch made a mistake.
But in the business of writing and communicating where the goal is to convey an intended message, mistakes are not just unfortunate slip-ups, they can also be downright costly. Six Degrees describes the punctuation, grammar and numerical errors that have resulted in expensive losses, compensation payouts and damaged reputations. Previously, we wrote about how the absence of a comma resulted in a US trucking company being forced to compensate its workers millions of dollars in unpaid overtime.
Businesses have been destroyed by typographical errors. Take the example of a Cardiff-based company Taylor & Sons Ltd, a 124-year-old engineering business with more than 250 employees. In 2009, when a different company – Taylor & Son Ltd (note singular ‘Son’) – went into liquidation, it was inadvertently registered with the Companies House (a UK government agency that maintains a public register of companies) as ‘Taylor & Sons Ltd’ (note plural ‘Sons’).
The government agency took only 3 days to correct the mistake, but it was too late. As information got around, clients left Taylor & Sons Ltd, contracts were cancelled and credit dried up. Within 2 months the company went into administration. In 2015, the High Court awarded £8.8 million (approximately A$15.8 million) to the owners of Taylor & Sons.
The most tragic consequence of a typographical mistake would have to be loss of life. At 9.10 am on 9 September 2013, a doctor called for an ambulance from a western Sydney practice because his patient, an 18-month-old toddler, was short of breath. But no ambulance would be forthcoming: the ambulance dispatch was incorrectly set for 19:14 instead of 9:14. A second call had to be made, and the child later died in hospital after going into cardiac arrest.
So yes, making mistakes is necessary and sometimes even beneficial, but generally not in a communication context when stakes are high.
Make a point of proofreading your communications, always. Build in the time for it. If necessary, read your work aloud (or get Microsoft Word to do it for you). Another option is to change the font of your text to trick your mind into thinking the content is unfamiliar and fresh. Many simple errors can be caught this way.
If you want to take that extra precaution, have a fresh pair of eyes look over your work: a friend, a colleague or perhaps even a professional proofreader.
